Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc., has been a long-time supporter of Dogecoin (DOGE). In his first tweet about the project in 2019, he called it his favorite cryptocurrency and said it was “pretty cool.”
At the time, DOGE was not well-known, but with the help of several other posts and a bullish crypto market, it gained popularity and created millionaires. In 2021, DOGE reached its highest value of $0.7376, but it has since seen a decline and is now starting to show a revival in 2024.
During a recent Q&A session at the reopening of Tesla’s gigafactory in Berlin, Musk was asked when people could buy a Tesla with DOGE. He responded by saying, “At some point, I think we should enable that,” and then repeated the catchphrase “Dogecoin to the moon,” which was met with cheers from the crowd.
Musk also explained why he first started supporting DOGE, saying that people at both Tesla and SpaceX asked him to endorse it because it was “the people’s crypto.”
It’s worth noting that Tesla also accepts DOGE as payment for merchandise, adding to the potential use cases for the cryptocurrency. In 2021, Musk announced that Tesla would start accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for their vehicles, but the program was later discontinued due to environmental concerns about the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining.
Despite this, Musk’s comments have had a positive impact on DOGE, with the cryptocurrency seeing a 15% increase after his recent statements. It will be interesting to see if Musk continues to explore the possibility of using DOGE as a payment option for Tesla in the future.
In comparison to Bitcoin, DOGE uses a similar consensus model, but it produces lower emissions. However, it is still a factor to consider when evaluating the potential of a DOGE payments program.
Regardless of the past discontinuation of Bitcoin payments, Musk’s comments have been a boost for DOGE. It will be interesting to see if Tesla will take a closer look at DOGE and potentially use it for purchasing their vehicles in the future.
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